LEARN ABOUT MY WORK:
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Adapted into an audio piece premiering at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival
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4.5 Stars on ReviewsHub.com
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Playbill's "What to Watch", February 2021
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Press includes:
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Podcasts: Sirius XM, Latinos out Loud, Good Grief (named Spotify's "Best Podcast Episodes of the Month")
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2023: Profiled by the Smithsonian Channel Series "Portrait of an Artist"
"DELEJOS (FROM AFAR)" (2021)
"Delejos is a beautiful, raw and innovative experience. A reminder that the most poignant, tragic, happy and healing stories are sometimes the ones we live."
- Carolina Moreno, HBO
“Never thought I’d sign up to see a Zoom show twice. This is the closest I’ve felt to live theater since lockdown started.”
- Shaun Leisher, Emerge Theater Company
Story Description: On our first date, Jose told me about his work-in-progress virtual reality video game "Delejos" - a game about overcoming physical separation, inspired by his own experience of forced immigration from Venezuela. By his design, players set out to connect to something they love - from afar. What was clear to me, in that moment, was that he was turning his grief into an adventure for the world to play. What I couldn't yet see is that I would soon have to take that journey myself. So I embarked on the adventure, and I took a trip through his game.
Performance Description:
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I wrote, performed and directed the show for Zoom, during the pandemic, to further explore the central theme of forced separation.
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I live-scored the story, as I told it, on my electric guitar.
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I built two "sets", which I toggled back and forth between through the act of shifting my laptop.
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The story weaved in and out of an "at home VR experience", where audiences closed their eyes and I guided them, with audio, through an alternate universe in their imagination.
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2023: Profiled by the Smithsonian Channel series "Portrait of an Artist"
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2022: Recipient of "The Lab" Artist Residency with Long Wharf Theater
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2022: Recipient of "WOOF" Development Residency at Brooklyn Comedy Collective
"HUM" (2023)
Story Description: At 10 years old, I became consumed with the question ‘what will happen next?’. When I couldn’t find an answer in my uncertain world, my body gave me one: a hum. But when my hum was diagnosed as mild Tourette’s syndrome, medication took it away. I was left with a question, no answer, and a quest to find something – or someone – to reunite me with that mysterious good feeling.
“Hum” explores the complicated role of shame in treating mental illness, and the humor that exists at the intersection of clinical neurodivergence and everyday anxiety. Rather than getting rid of our tics, what if we imagine a world where tic-ing wasn’t wrong?
Performance Description:
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Everyone in the audience has a speaking role: either they're "The Weatherman" or they're my mom. In the role of my mom, they read lines I project behind me in "conversation" with me. I transcribed those lines directly from an actual interview I did with my mom.
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In every performance, I'm joined on-stage by a new musician. They have nothing prepared - instead, they're hearing the story for the first time and they're invited to craft a live-improvised musical score.
JULIE FOR PRESIDENT: AN IMMERSIVE BIRTHDAY (2022)
Experience Description: I felt a little nervous about turning 30, so as a way of shoring up the confidence, I decided to run for President of the 30th birthday.
My presidential platform? When we turn 30, we should face the fear head-on and get tattoos on our foreheads that say “I’m 30”.
Somewhere through the filming of my campaign video, I grew a little doubtful of the idea. A tattoo? On my face? Should I really do this? So I invited my friends to come compete against me on their own platforms. What unfolded was part-birthday celebration, part-immersive theater, complete with fierce competition, stump speeches, scandals and slander, and one final winner.
